No to the political abuse of art and culture in the service of apartheid! (Press Release, October 6, 2015)

In the wake of the academic boycott call earlier this year, 160 Belgian artists and cultural workers as well profess their refusal to collaborate in any way with the State of Israel as long as it pursues its policies of apartheid, occupation and colonisation.

The refugee crisis, these days, is claiming all our attention. Do we remember, though, that the first massive stream of refugees after World War II was caused by the establishment of the State of Israel? Implacably, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their ancestral homes and lands as part of the ethnic cleansing the Palestinians themselves recall as al-Nakba, i.e. “the Catastrophe”. Nowadays 6 million of them are living in the diaspora, many of them in refugee camps or fleeing once again. Meanwhile, in a reaction to the present crisis, Israel starts building new walls, in the same way as it builds a wall around the Palestinian people in order to keep it subjugated under a harsh, military regime. Palestine's colonization, dispossession and occupation by Israel, in violation of international law, is one of the important causes of frustration and violence in the whole region.

With our campaign of cultural boycott we wish to give Israel a clear signal: put an end to your policy of apartheid, occupation and discrimination! A democratic future for all the inhabitants of Israel and Palestine is made impossible because of it. Agreed: art and culture may be a sanctuary where critical sense and human exchange can bring people together. For the Palestinians, though, the daily reality is one of repression and humiliation. The occupying Israeli army, on the one hand, is targeting Palestinian cultural institutions and centers and makes freedom of movement impossible for Palestinian artists. On the other hand, Israel is abusing arts and culture as an ideological lubricant for its colonial project. The Israeli state, that is, is waging a war on the cultural front as well.

A hypocritical game.

This cultural boycott does not target individual Israeli artists or artistic companies and their productions. It bears upon institutions, festivals and cultural events set up by the Israeli authorities in order to legitimatize, or most of all: trivialize, its colonial apartheid and occupation. Our commitment to justice for the Palestinians has nothing to do with any kind of anti-Semitism.

As it was formulated by one of our signatories, Mireille Gleizes: “Boycotting is maybe not the best way to improve things and I considered strongly before signing the petition but after more than 50 years of violation of international law by the Israelian government and a situation that becomes worse I felt I had to because I don’t see another way. Instead of bridges they are building walls”.

BACBI (Belgian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) and its 600 signatories are convinced that specific boycott activities are the only peaceful way to increase the pressure on the Israeli authorities and their colonial policies. The global boycott campaign has a growing impact. Artists of different countries refuse to play in this hypocritical game. BDS is worrying the Israeli authorities more and more and is now recognized by them as being a “strategic threat” – a sign that this non-violent way of putting pressure is effective, indeed.

These days, in Jerusalem as well as in the West Bank the aggressions against the Palestinians are on the increase, making a lot of victims. In a kind of "exchange for the Iran deal", the Israeli government demands from the US that it’d accept, among other things, the annexation of large parts of the West Bank. Incarcerations without indictment, demolitions of houses and schools, collective punishments, killings, nightly raids... they continue unabated. In such circumstances we keep calling: do boycott Israel, culturally as well!

Gideon LEVY: "So These Are Israel's New Heroes?"Israel's recent military operations in Palestinian hospitals are a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention, and make you wonder how low the country can sink (Haaretz, Nov 21, 2015).

Noam SHEIZAF: "Jerusalem, in context"(+972, October 19, 2015). "The current events in Jerusalem have a political history and context. Attempts to attribute the violence to some kind of Palestinian pathology while ignoring other factors is a recipe for making things worse."